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There are a number of motivations for a webinar – establish brand awareness, enhance credibility and thought leadership, educate your audience, build a business case for your solution/services, drive qualified leads for your sales force to pursue, etc., etc., etc.; but none of that means a thing if you can’t get an audience, and the only way to build that audience is to get registrants. If you have made the effort to get people to your registration page, you need to do all you can to convert them into registrants. Optimize your page so that your visitors have no reason to leave without registering. These tips will help increase registrations, attendees and your overall webcasting ROI.

1. Submission Form Design

When designing your submission form, less is more. The optimal number of fields for your submission form is from 4 to 7. Each additional field you add causes a higher percentage of people to leave without registering. You should only require a field if it makes a direct impact on your follow-up campaigns. Also, be sure to have fields aligned in one column, preferably on the right side of the page. Placing the form on the right side instead of the left side can increase conversions by 24%. When designing the page, make sure the “Submit” button is contrasted with its surroundings and make it as noticeable as possible.

2. Provide Incentive

If you are trying to get registrants to sign up in advance for your webinar, give them a reason to sign up now instead of hoping they come back later. Try providing teaser content that is related to what the webinar is about, such as an eBook, email, or whitepaper. Something that has worked really well for us and our clients is to leverage video on the registration page, essentially using it as a webinar trailer of sorts. It’s extremely effective! That’s not surprising when you consider that video is consistently ranked among the top two content marketing tools on the market today (along with webinars!).

3. Page Content

Your page content should be limited to a brief description of the webinar and what your audience will learn by attending. Think like a registrant – anticipate any questions your audience may want answered before they decide to register. What value are you providing that will make your audience want to take 45-50 minutes out of their day to hear what you have to say? Repeat after me: “short and sweet.”

4. Show Registrant Count

Providing the number of registrants you have shows potential registrants the demand for the webinar and can help influence them to sign up. You can get folks asking themselves the question, “If my colleagues are signing up, am I missing something by not doing the same?” Creating legitimacy is important to snag those visitors and convert them into registrants.

5. Sharing is Caring

Provide social media share icons to enable your webinar content to be shared with ease. This is a hassle-free way to drive additional registrations. Also, provide the ability to add the webinar to your personal calendar. This helps increase your registration to attendee ratio, which for some companies is quite poor.

6. Keep ‘em while you got ‘em

If you’ve driven a visitor to your registration page, design the page so they are less likely to wander off. Customize the page with company logos, color schemes and pictures related to the webinar. As mentioned earlier, leverage video when you can. Registration pages are like a plate of food; if it looks great, you’re much more likely to dig in. If you’re using a webinar provider that doesn’t allow this level of customization, you’re with the wrong provider. Limit menu dropdowns and any other distracting elements that are not directly related to the webinar. Keep them focused on the webinar, and be sure to have your call to action throughout the page such as, “Register now to learn about…” or “By registering today, you will receive our free eBook…”

7. Get personal

Let the visitors know who the webinar speaker(s) are. Provide pictures, names, titles, bios, etc. This enhances credibility and makes the webinar a more personable experience, as opposed to “some person” that will be presenting information to them. If your presenters are willing to take it a step further, ask them if they’re willing to provide their email or a virtual business card on the page.

Give it a try! Play with the theme, wording, placement… mix it up until you find the perfect balance. Now watch your registration numbers climb and do your happy dance.

We’re all guilty of it. I’m a big preacher against it, but sometimes even I have to remind myself not to do it. What am I talking about? I’m talking about “just touching base” or “just checking in.”

We’ve all had opportunities that get stuck in the pipeline. We thought we did everything right – we dug for business pain and how it was affecting the prospect’s ability to execute their job effectively, we built the business case, and then put a proposal against that business case that solved the challenge that prospect was facing. We thought it was a done deal and that signed contract would be in our inbox any day. But it hasn’t come through and even worse, your prospect hasn’t responded to your calls and emails for a few weeks, if not longer. And you’re not helping your chances when you lead with “just touching base.” It annoys the hell out of them. They’ve got a lot of people vying for their time and competing for their business, and only the folks that bring real value every step of the way are going to earn it. Here are a few things you can do to stop the awkward silence and get that contract through the door:

Reiterate the Business Case

If you’ve built a strong value proposition and the deal is looking like it’s stuck and quiet on the other end, reiterate why you and the prospect got to this stage in the first place and why your solution will solve their challenges. There’s a lot of value in saying, “Jim, when we first got together you mentioned that driving qualified leads into the pipeline was your biggest challenge. You’ve worked with organizations that drove ‘leads’ for you, but they rarely met your defined criteria of what a qualified lead should be, and thus you were wasting your time on contacts that either weren’t the right fit or they weren’t close to a buying cycle. You told me this was killing your pipeline and that your sales team was becoming frustrated. We came up with a solution that would get you in front of ‘sales ready’ leads and increase your pipeline value 5 X. I wanted to make sure that solving this challenge and increasing pipeline value is still important to you, and that you’re ready to do something about it by moving forward with our solution.” How much better is that than “Just checking in?” Another road to take would be to state the risk they’re facing by not doing something.

Find an Article/Case Study, etc. that will Resonate

I always tell our sales folks to do their homework and study the industry. Be on the lookout for articles, case studies, research reports, etc., that they can use as ammo to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline more effectively. Instead of “just touching base,” taking an approach of “Sarah, I came across this article and thought you would find it interesting. I believe it speaks to the challenges you are currently faced with and best practices for solving them. I hope you find it valuable” brings a lot more value. It shows your prospect that you’re thinking about them and doing your homework. They respect that so much more

Provide a Piece of Content/Invite Them to an Event

As a provider of webinar-based marketing solutions, I believe that webinars are a great tool to accelerate opportunities through the pipeline more effectively. Webinars are no longer just a tool to educate your audience and drive more qualified leads. They’re a fantastic weapon to help you close business. When it makes sense, we often use on-demand webinars as tools to get a prospect moving. Or if we have an upcoming webinar, take The Seven Costly Sins of Lead Generation for instance, that’s going to cover a lot of issues that one of our key prospects is faced with, we’ll send them a personal invitation. “Dave, we have a webinar coming up next week where we’ll cover a lot of the ideas that you and I have brainstormed together over the last few months. Here’s a link to register…I hope you can make it.” Value, value, value.

I know it sounds simple, but not enough sales reps do it. If you can do your due diligence and provide value during every stage of the funnel, you’re going to break that awkward prospect silence and get more signed contracts in your inbox.

If you’re compelled, please share your feedback below. Talk soon!

Jason Stegent is the Founder & President of Elastic Solutions. Email him @ jstegent@elasticroi.com